I threw a bottle
with no message
to a trout who tried
to catch it with his mouth
which gave me time
while he was occupied
to stretch a bridge across
the lake and build a cabin
with a view to something better
than the current occupation
with non-clarity, and thus
the trout expanded his
ability to yawn, and I
forgot what it was like
to drown in non-essential
gravities; the fish and I have
made a pact to bring the
relaxation back to moments
that are units of pure profit,
and the crow who came
to analyze our business plan
agreed there is no finer way
than to practice with a simple
preposition like an and, forget
the but, the or, just focus on
vitality; so now it is the three
of us, the crow, the trout, and
me who write the strategies
of messages in bottles that
we throw into mad oceans of
perplexity with knowledge
that the best of you will
join the best of me and
then the rest of us will
follow and we’ll find
there is no end.

The End

~~~

P.S. The “More” Behind the Poem: Several friends enthused about the rhyme scheme and playfulness of this poem, and suggested I share its beginnings. Every creative birth has a story, of course, but this one felt livelier than usual. I’d been listening the night before to a YouTube clip of a latino dance style called “la cumbia”. Drop the first “I” of the poem, and you’ll hear it–threw a BOT-tle with no MESS-age to a TROUT who tried to CATCH it, etc.

Next morning, I went for my usual trail walk, thinking about an empty plastic water bottle. I sat on a bench to write a poem about the bottle and a trout, when a large crow landed in the nearby pine and SQUAWKED in perfect cumbia rhythm at me. I’d already written the first ten lines; the crow wrote himself into the final ten, exactly like a manager or talent scout taking over the “business side” of things. When I was finished, I looked up to see if he’d flown away. He was still there; a lady crow had joined him. The two were making out, uttering little cooing noises you would never associate with crows. It was the finest proof I’ve ever seen that the Universe has perfect timing and a whacked sense of humour. Thank you, Tiel Healy, for suggesting I add the P.S. Readers, you would love Tiel’s “Plan BE”, which you can find here at her blog.

If words like powerless should lurk within your day’s vocabulary, if life feels like a three-penny opera that no one wants to pay to see—the jerks! and win equates to loss, you hate your boss, the deals you thought were watertight fall through, I’ll show you something different, a map that moves you over grooves, a slam without the damn that dynasties who knew a thing or two about prosperity hooked onto. Clues have always lain around like desert sand; agendas sinister have strewn them few and far between. Well, here’s the all of All— the gig, no bites, the rise without the fall.

II – Above Below, You Are the Envelope

The gig, no bites, the rise without the fall, she’s already happening, the higher you expands toward ever more perfection; it’s the puny mind that falls behind, all caught up in the past with proof! The flyer of the gods, great Hermes, with pure gumption set it up. You are hermetic, sealed, an envelope with higher thoughts and lower, and these cannot for long fly separate ways. The skank can’t run from diplomat; to ban the coward from the bro disempowers both. And by the way, you’re on full display— the best, the worst—which may initially strike you as far beyond reality.

III – From Inside the Insidest

Strike, you, as far beyond reality as possible! This is the stretch that’s asked by Infinitely Smart, your future best that calls to you from Love’s supremacy where every answer brings the question, tasked to fire up your passions and interest— listen up!—then brings you strange new people, some are cute, some acutely scary. They, with fine detail, arrive to pave your road with all you’ve stored nucleically—feeble or forthright, it’s your clay and mortar. Say what you like, friend, but blaming will corrode pipes and dreams. Seeing mostly failure, then you would be right, the worlds of crime and sin.

IV – Adapt: Dilute or Strengthen

You would be right. The worlds of crime and sin will never let you reach the bottom where the body lies, though they’ll happily let you chase those paths of misery in ratios of your choosing—where is the care, the love? And finding disappointment yet again. Ta-da! So look the other way. Everyone’s well-meaning, doing their best; their means may not accord with yours, but it’s not your mess to straighten. My inner ray of hope shines just as bright as yours. The test is each to see and find our own; our wits mirror belief, no more. Let’s overhaul, for once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all.

V – The Great Big Inside Family

For once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all the beads that loop you through the string of life and leave no residue. The addict’s pull— I want it now!—the thoughtless, inner brawl contains the speed, but unaware, brings strife. Your multitudes, when leaderless, are fools, an arrow with no head, bandwagoneers. Throw off your fears, and penetrate those thoughts! Allow no whine to perpetrate, for once, and then again, a third, and persevere until you feel the loosening of knots.This is forgive, and it’s for getting! Fronts of old resistance will march through, you’ll see, designed to offer upward lift, to free.

VI – Nothing Till it Hits the Earth

Designed to offer upward lift, to free, the density of conflict is the cold that rises heat, the solar you. Avoid the trollish need to join the fray, the fee is too high. Frogs trapped in a well grow old and croak, stay sadly until death, unbuoyed. Until you can fulfil the rise, the fall is mere excuse, a laziness—here’s why I can’t. Or won’t. Oh my, the litanies! Poetic rants, a stomping folderol when lunar cool, STFU, would dry the swamp to peat & fuel; then hopeful breeze must spark the flame that rises you and me, and not enslave you to conformity.

VII – Be Fussy Who You Play With

And not enslave you to conformity, Uriah Heepfulness, a sickish kind of helpfulness, so terrified of debts that fawn and scrape replace true amity, your word becomes a roadside stall defined by crappy goods. No need for these regrets! Receive friends with real appreciation— first done by being one. Priceless worth comes from me esteeming me, then you, rising through my eyes, we reap, no deviation, bounty of the flooded banks, mighty sums together. Ahead would be surprising in the ways of gain, taint-free wealth, not lack, if you would just drop tit for tat, leave back.

VIII – Winged Heels and Free Fall

If you would just drop tit for tat, leave back in cluttered halls what you’ve been taught about longevity and her twisted sister, growing old, ride in Mercury’s backpack, you would see the multi-lie turned inside out, for growing ever young is the twister, pathway of the gods and giant ages, way beyond paltry strains of villainy, the plod of sacrifice, lives mounting joy. No one deprives you! Cells know all stages, and what you like to think is tyranny reduces thought to loss, a sad deploy. Our body-mind remembers, so leave stealth behind, go only forth. You’d find the wealth.

IX – Keeps the Bedbugs Away

Behind, go only forth, you’d find the wealth; fly life out like a kite string, hand over hand, obedient to currents outside thinking’s limitation. Inherent health resides at the cleft of thought. See clover or dung, bloom or decay; in both reside potential joy. Resentment brings the rash, unpleasant itch, with as much misery as the shrinking heart can hold. Are you bold enough to make peace with power and cash? Can you swim through the greater mystery straight to success, accept its blessings, fold its curves into yourself, become the lea of kings and true democracies, a sea?

X – No Such Thing as Solid

Of kings and true democracies, a sea divides the potencies to islands of precise individuality. That’s you, my dear, and me, and everybody limpid, clear as glass, composed of pure love, and from this heightened state the former flats of sadness show their ephemeral selves as mere topography, lines carved in sand, no need to trip, much less to grieve, that sleeve where sits your heart, little tailoring elves wait eagerly to stitch the rips, your hand is firmly held by all above, believe till you can see us in our anti-black of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack.

XI – All of This, my Doing

Of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack, hello to glorious states of wonder, no heavy lids, all wide-eyed here, doing what we came to do—create new worlds. Back there, we all made fun; today, stand under majesty’s umbrella, Tree of Being in full bloom and giving fruit, forbid to none. At times, you are the bark that scratches, I, the root, that digs around until you bite. The games of chase go on, your catches love the being caught, and you’ve stopped dropping them at my door. We know each other’s hue from blinding floods before the rainbow’s wealth, that crazy stressful enemy of health.

XII – Wondrous Continuous

That crazy stressful enemy of health, that scourging, false humility who wails, I am not worthy, yes I am, but you’re not, to compost has been turned, death blow dealt; the body-mind precisely tuned regales in nothing less than plenitude, well-shored by evidence of pure design and form, from which above-below can spin the whole of you to match the Heaven scent of Earth. This is the dance of Love, the Court reborn and effortless the steps, a caracol whose speed like stillness feels, painless rebirth. To have, to hold becomes I know, I’ve got. Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not?

XIII – Three in One, I’ve Won

Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not? Let possums who play dead attract their own. Three-fold Trismegistus has arrived, winged feet in every word, now and then, a spot of silence to absorb the beauty grown within and out, serenity, her ringed magnificence the banner that uplifts medieval to full good arrived intact, of ever after happily, the truth we sought is here, my dear, we won the gifts that fairy tale and myth sustained, our pact with joy all colours of our spectral youth we may employ the love we freely sought for fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot.

XIV – The Solar Truth & Nothing But

For fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot, and this is all of Thoth I’ve come to say. My lunar friends, the twilit souls, you are as I am, where you choose to be for now. Our residence is change, movement the plot of every tale, and now this peacock’s play is done, I fold my tail. You will allow some small affection to remain, I hope, though I shall not come back this way again. The spiral road does not repeat, we climb, we soar and drop, but what we’ve done to cope before is born afresh, and what this pen sets down cannot be chased. Some other time we have already laughed and would begin, if words like powerless should lurk within.

XV – This Crown, Forever Yours

If words like powerless should lurk within the gig, no bites, the rise without the fall strike you as far beyond reality, you would be right. The worlds of crime and sin— for once, forgive, forget, for what!?—are all designed to offer upward lift, to free and not enslave you to conformity. If you would just drop tit for tat, leave back behind, go only forth, you’d find the wealth of kings and true democracies, a sea of pure prosperity, goodbye to lack, that crazy stressful enemy of health. Pick up your bed and rise alive, why not? For fun is why we came, to thrive, our lot.

~~~

Author’s Note: This 15-stanza poem is a Crown of Sonnets, also known as Sonnet Redoublé. Constructing such a piece is great fun, for you get the chance to travel a theme with 14 opening lines that fold up to conclude with the 15th, crowning stanza. The theme I borrowed and interpreted is the Emerald Tablet of Hermes, which has been translated into 13 or 14 tenets—perfect shape for this form. I’ve used the rhyme scheme ABCABCDEFDEFGG, for its combing effect. I am grateful to John Donne and various poetic academies, now lost to time, who conceived the form and left for us an invigorating challenge.

Coriander boogie
got me shakin’
in the morning
got me thinkin’
‘bout my baby and
the ways that we
been stormin’.

Coriander boogie
took me down
where there’s no
‘scaping, showed me
how we’s all behavin’
in a way that
keeps us slavin’.

So then I says to coriander,
what’s a gal to do when
all that’s sweet and green
and leafy turns to spice
that ain’t so nice?
You got advice?

And here’s what
coriander said to me:

You gotta let the green be green,
the fully ripened brings the flavour;
the twigs ain’t meant for eatin’
but they fed the seeds all season.

And the leaves that was
cilantro knew the time
to say, so long, and
that’s the thing you got
to learn that every reason
has its time. There ain’t no
right or wrong, only Mama
Nature growin’ up a bushel
and a beauty of a coriander,
once cilantro song!

The river is running
damage done, the battles
won and lost, upstream
a history only twice
remembered can repeat
itself, or not, without
our vigilance.

The stones are holding
place, coincidence restores
her right to rule at left of
metaphor, they balance flow
and currency, the two—not
one can spell catastrophe;
the literal are tiles of mosaic
wall, installed for shade
and beauty, nothing more.

Now and then, a gull may
fly across my boundaries—
her wingspan I will recognize
as you, but count no coup
on victories past, I will not
honour them, and nor
should you, when rivers
run afresh and stones
forget they once
were thrown.

No less than these
comprise the infinite
design, the pleasuring.
What once was two is
now our full-grown
heart, made one.

I have a caboose
at the end of my train
with an imp that enjoys
thumbing noses and moons
at the sun when a new dawn
arises my eyes need to blink
and the imp sees his chance
and he hangs from the tail
where he shouts at the passing
terrain, whatcha you gonna do
now, pretty boy?

My imp’s name is Kit, and I do
try to shush him, though not very
much ‘cause he’s got the touch of
a jester at heart, and my brain with
its lore is a bit of a bore, and my
soul isn’t whole unless I can
laugh at the bridges we burn
and the tracks we lay down
and pretend when we crash
that they weren’t our
own handiwork.

The thing is, we all
have to run on the steam
that we bring, and if mine
blows too hot or too cold in
your face, and yours makes
me yawn, we could still show
some grace—not go stupid nutty
all over the place, when our tracks
must diverge. I have no intention
of leaving sweet Kit at the station
or anywhere else for I love how
how he thinks and he sees and
he laughs—he’s divine. Yes,
Kit, my kaboodle, is mine!

Weathervane, you spin and crow
directions of the winds that blow
across my scapes of heart and lust,
but nothing do you know of trust
or what goes on beneath this roof
to set alight the breeze of truth.
And when the weather calms, what
use a cock of iron sitting mute, not
registering sun or dew? Your tail
though carved most fancifully, no sail
can fill if from your inmost will
you cannot grasp a finer skill
or rise beyond incessant vanity,
perfidious and pretty weathervane.